1. Field
The following description relates to photography. More particularly, this description relates to an apparatus and method to process an image using light field data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, photography systems generally use one photograph operation that enables only one image to be viewed at a time. However, research has been conducted on a plenoptic camera having a focus recombination function. The plenoptic camera, also referred to as a light field camera, captures 4-dimensional light field information of a scene using a microlens array (e.g., a lenticular lens array) or a light coded mask. Such a plenoptic camera may provide a user with various functions, such as changing a focal plane and enabling a scene to be viewed from several angles, after one photograph operation, i.e., after a single image capture. A plenoptic camera can be used to reduce a correspondence problem in stereo matching, i.e., in linking stereo images together.
In addition, high-resolution images are needed in many areas, for example, surveillance cameras, computed tomography (CT) images for precision diagnosis, computer vision for pattern recognition, geological survey satellite images, etc. In order to obtain high-resolution images, research has been conducted to provide methods of reconstructing a high-resolution image from a sequence of low-resolution images using signal processing technologies.